Fix Audio Designs
Paul Wolff has been designing professional audio equipment since 1975.
Paul Wolff began his desire to blow things up at an early age, from changing water into hydrogen and oxygen in a grade school project, to building small explosives to go fishing with. No, he didn’t invent stereo, or reverb; nonetheless, his musician parents always supported him throughout his ventures, he ended up as the house sound man at a DC night club, The Bayou, doing FOH for such “new” acts as Foreigner, Pat Benatar, Dire Straits, etc.
This led him into the recording studio end of the industry, and he moved into a DC studio called “No Evil Multimedia", and during a Synclavier seminar at the studio, he was introduced to a fellow that worked at a company that had just acquired API called Datatronix. Wolff left the studio to start his official beginning in the console business at the new company.
API was a multimillion dollar company that made recording consoles and was at the forefront of recording and broadcasting. The company went out of business in 1978 and was taken over by Datatronix. After working at this for several years, the audio portion (API) of Datatronix was put up for sale so they could develop the first pay phone with a credit card slot, which was invented there. Wolff purchased the assets after leaving the company in 1985.
During the years that followed, Mr. Wolff introduced the first of many new products; the 5502 rack mount EQ, the 550B, the 3124, the 512b mic pre, etc.
After a few years, they built a console for Kooster at Record Plant Remote, which is still in full service today. Soon after that, the Legacy Console was designed by Wolff, and after adding Jeff Bork to the team, they designed the Legacy Plus. They shipped around 28 consoles during that period, with a total gross sales figure of around 12.5 million.
In 1999, the assets of API were sold to the ATI Group, the manufactures of the world famous ATI Paragon and Paragon II live mixing and monitor consoles. Paul stayed with the company and designed several new products like the now famous 2500, the 8200 series summing mixer, the 7800 master section, and with Jeff, the new Vision console, along with many reissues of earlier products.
Seeing a shift in the recording industry, Mr. Wolff left the company in 2004 and formed Tonelux Designs Limited. The concept of the Tonelux product line was geared towards the “new studio model”, where so much more of the production work is being done in the Work Station, and the requirement for a large frame console is not as necessary as it had been in the past.
The company did very well for the next 5 years and was sold to the PMI AUDIO GROUP in Gardena, CA. Mr. Wolff was bought out of all stock, IP and ownership, but was hired on to continue the development of the Tonelux product line.
After staying with Tonelux for a few years, Mr. Wolff left and began custom consulting for several well known audio companies such as A-Designs, Analog Alien, Steven Slate Companies, Sunset Sound Recorders, ect.
In 2016, Paul started FIX AUDIO DESIGNS, LLC.
In addition to Fix Audio Designs, he has many custom designs under the name "Paul Wolff Designs" that include the well known "Slate Control", a studio quality control room master controller that can select 7 inputs, monitor through 3 sets of speakers, and has talkback and cue functions. www.slatemt.com/products/slate-control. Along with the Slate Control, Mr. Wolff also designed the VMS1 mic preamp for the incredible Slate VMS mic modeling device, that can sound like just about any classic mic or preamp. www.slatedigital.com. The "Mix Factory", a 16 channel summing device designed to Tony Shepperd's specifications for A-Designs www.adesignsaudio.com. Sunset Sound's "Tutti" all discrete mic preamp, a dual 990 discrete 500 series preamp designed to the specifications of the world famous Sunset Sound console and floater pre-amps. www.sunsetsound.com. He is also working on a Mic.Pre/Compressor/Equalizer 500 module for Lindell Audio www.lindellaudio.se. Paul is also working on several consumer/security/medical products with several well know people in the audio industry. He was recently inducted into the NAMM TECnical Hall of Fame for his creation of the API 500 series Lunchbox® that helped to virtually create an entire industry of 500 series modules, consoles and racks. www.apiaudio.com.